HTHS team presents project to NASA

HTHS Engineering Academy students work on creating training racks unaffected by gravity for a NASA project.

Three students from the Hewitt-Trussville High School Engineering Academy have been working on a project for NASA this school year: Ash Letts, Cape Kilgore, and Britt Plage.

The students were assigned with the task of making training racks – to be used in Huntsville for astronaut and ground crew training – work similar to what would occur in space. Inside the space station, tilt down racks pivot to allow access to instrumentation and experiments.

At the training facility in Huntsville, the racks are affected by gravity. When loaded with all of the instrumentation and experiments, the racks can be heavy and hard to rotate, unlike in space.

The team had to make the rack behave like it would in space and make it weight-neutral. The team devised a progressive counterbalance system that assists the operator when lowering and raising the rack. On May 4, the students presented their final project to NASA.